The History of the Palladian Church
“A short line about Palladian Church History.”
Nicholas Revett, 1721-1804, the architect of the church and member of the Society of Dilettanti. For more information on this Suffolk-born gentleman architect, archaeologist and adventurer, please see here.
The Commission
The Palladian Church was commissioned by Sir Lionel Lyde around 1775 and built in 1778. The church was designed by Nicholas Revett and is a Grade 1 listed building.
Revett (was passionate about classical buildings. Together with James Stuart, he published several volumes of detailed drawings of classical buildings in Greece and elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, having travelled extensively on a “Grand Tour” for his research. The Palladian Church is loosely modelled on the columns found in the temple to Apollo on the island of Delos, in the Cyclades – and so is, in fact, an early example of the Greek Revival style and not “Palladian”, as it is generally – called. The interior is more Roman inside, with the column styles changing from Greek Doric to a more Ionian style.
Do look at the images below for a picture of the inscription on one of the plinths, above Sir Lionel’s tomb, which is a form of eulogy to Revett.
The Original Design
The church as originally built did not look like the picture above (thanks to Chris Dowsett for this stunning image); Carola Oman’s book, “Ayot Rectory”, includes a sketch by H.G. Oldfield, from Volume 1 of his “Views of Hertfordshire”, showing the additional feature of “tempiettes” above each lateral pavilion.
Until very recently I was unsure if it was actually built like this; the triglyphs also do not run right across the front of the church as pictured by Oldfield. s However, there isa sketch by Thomas Clutterbuck, apparently from 1807,( Herts County Archives) which does show the church looking like the Oldfield image; given that this sketch is more naturalistic, we can assume that the original building did indeed look like this! The reference in the circular towers is, we believe, to the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, in Athens, and was a frequent source of inspiration to neo-classical architects.
Orientation and Layout
The church was built in parkland belonging to Sir Lionel and was orientated in reverse to the normal church building rules: the front door faces Ayot House, his home, which means that the altar is at the west end of the church, rather than the liturgically correct east end. This main door was intended for the use of the Lyde family and invitees; villagers entered through a door, bricked up many years ago, in the north side (to the right of the image above). We have recently re-opened this door as it now forms the entrance to our loo and kitchenette, constructed in 2015 and housed in a small extension, tucked behind the original solid panels immediately adjacent to the main body of the building.
The Mausoleum
Sir Lionel intended the church to serve both as a village church and as a mausoleum to his wife and himself. Sadly, their marital life was not happy and so he decreed in his will that “what the church united in life, let it keep separate in death”. Hence the pavilions at either side of the main church structure house, to the north, Sir Lionel’s remains and, to the south, those of his wife.
[Add wording about grave in the church]
George Bernard Shaw and Ayot St Lawrence
One of the village’s best known residents was George Bernard Shaw, who rented a house in the village from 1906, eventually purchasing it in 1920. It provided a space where he could write away from the bustle of the London home that had been purchased many years earlier by his Irish heiress wife Charlotte Payne Townsend. The revolving writing hut in the garden where he composed many of his plays can be visited today during a visit to his home; he named it “London” so that visitors to Ayot could be told that he was not available to meet them as he was in London that day.
It seems that one of the reasons that the Shaws chose to live in Ayot was that they espied a tombstone in the Palladian church graveyard to a lady called Mary Ann South who had died, aged 70, and the epitaph on her tombstone was that “her time was short”. They considered this to be a good omen for a long life if you lived in the village!